Sturgis advertiser. (Sturgis, Dakota [S.D.]) 1887-1???, 1887-09-28
BEHIND THE EASTERN VEIL.
Persian -Wfat They Do and
How They DO Il.

Persian Women--w fat They DO and
How They DO II.
1 Eastern women are pitied and un
happy beings. on the theory that they
are imprisoned in q golden cage close.
" guarded by very ugly eunuchs, and
reduced to spend their time in attempt.
ing to catch the smiles of jealous
lord, as they sprawl in graceful atti-
tudes on silken cushions. Their only
Cher occupation is understood to be
dcvouring immense quantities of sweet
meats, in order to become corpulent;
a their only amusement the pleasure Of
poisoning rival wives and hearing in
terminable stories of the "Arabian
Nights" pattern.
It is true that with the Turk beauty
n must be fat. It is not SO, however,
with the Persian; he has the apprecia-
ton of connoisseur for the juste mil
len A stout woman in Persia is spok-
en Of as s.an elephant while the lean
Ell ones are generally called .'camels. !"
Though they deal largely in hyperbole,
T2ke Persians do not mince matters in
waking Of the fair sex.
he veil, which is habitually worn
Itsof doors even by the very poor in
III great towns in Persia, though its
: use is unknown among the tribes who
form at least a third of the whole pop
ulation, is chung to by the women as a
privilege; it is in fact a domino. The
d Persian woman out of doors is unrecog-
nizable even by her husband, She
sees without being seen, and in the veil
1T is impossible to detect the age of the
wearer, and the Persian lady is nearly
always married at IA; she begins to
fade at 81 at least, at 80 she appears
SO, and there are only two dentists in
& the whole of Persia.
Polygamy is the luxury of the rich;
with the upper and middle classes
bigamy is the rule. a mans first alli-
ance is a marriage for convenience, the
second either marriage for love or
the qualification of wants. When your
II Persian brings home second wife
q there is usually scene which lasts for
81 week or two; there is a struggle for
& supremacy. but it is soon over. Both
& wives do their best to please the mas
4 ter of the house, but they do not at
tempt to poison each other, unless in
very exceptional circumstances. But
Persian ladies still believe in the
efficacy OF love philters, and many an
on.ination is secretly administered to
unfortunate husbands. Happily, the
love philter, though usually composed
of horrible ingredients, is quite harm
less.
The bath takes up good deal of the
time of the Persian women. Even the
poorest will attend the Hammam at
least once week. For the lady the
bath is one of the serious affairs of life,
and takes up daily from two to four
hours of her time. 1t is something
more than our idea of bath. The
victim is scraped and rubbed and par
boiled. The soles of the feet are pum-
iced until they are soft and tender as
those of a little child. The hair is
thoroughly washed by means of hot
water and the saponaceous clay for
which Shiraz is celebrated. Then the
attendants mix in brazen bowl the
aromatic beuna with the requisite
amount of lemon juice, till a brown
paste of the consistency of cruel is pro-
duced, and several handIuls of
the repulsiye looking compound are
smeared over the lady's head. Then
the hair, collected into mass, is bound
up in cabbage leaves. Small quanti-
ties of the dye are smeared over the
eyebrows; the soles of the feet, the
toes, the palms of the hands, and the
finger tips are also covered with it
And now the lady has to sit perfectly
still for from one to three hours, till,
like meerschaum pipe, she colors;
and it is exactly the color obtained on
the best specimens of pipes that is most
fashionable among the PERSIAN ladies.
Day after day the bath is thronged
with women, each sitting perfectly
for the color to stake" But they have
their reward, for the henna dyes the
hair a beautiful deep warm chestnut;
hence gray hair is unknown among
Persian ladies. While the coloring
process has been going on tongues
have been running, and good deal
of scandal has been exchanged. The
female barber, with pair of tweezers,
has removed every outlying hair from
theregion of the lady's EYEBROWS. 1t is
the ambition of every Persian woman
that her eyebrows shall meet, or
at Last appear to do SO. So
attractive a'e eyebrows that meet
that they are called the s'bridge
& of love- The first care, then, of
the Persian beauty is with little PEN
Gil Of antimony to unite her eyebrows.
and then she proceeds to make them
appear of unnatural thickness; her eye
lashes are penciled, too, in manner
not unknown to our own country-wom-
en-. BY this time the lady will have
smoked many kalians or water pipes.
she will have partaken of tea, and re-
called herself with coffee; iced sherbets.